I’m a senior at Park this year, and for as long as I’ve been at Park people have said that Park Connections (PC) isn’t important and is something to blow off. I’ve always looked at it the opposite. I think Park Connections are really helpful. I saw it as just like any class we go to, but with its own layers of community building and impact.

The first thing that students like me take for granted is the updates we get at Park Connections for the upcoming weeks at Park. Let’s be honest, most of us don’t take time out of our day to read the 6245 sent out by the principal, and although the Echo site produces lots of content, our newspaper takes months to come out with a new issue, while we get these updates every week from PC. Park Connections helps keep me in the loop of events happening at our school. It promotes clubs going on in school that we typically wouldn’t know about unless we go out of our way to search for it. There are important things going on in Park all the time, and we can’t hold an assembly for every new thing that happens at Park or expect students to take time out of our day to read it either. Offering students a class that includes keeping them in the loop is the only way students will truly know what’s going on.

I particularly like when Park Connections is held because on those days class goes by quicker. Instead of 50 minute classes, there are 40 minute classes (besides fifth hour). That sounds bad on paper because we can’t do as much during that time, but take the students into account here. We go through a whole week of tests, work, studying and long school days. We just need a day that will go fast so we don’t have all that weight on our shoulders. Park Connections happens on Wednesday, right in the middle of the week when we are most burned out. Park Connections helps by giving us some time to take a deep breath and recuperate before the second half of the school week. 

Park Connections also helps community building and gives you a safe space. They split Park Connections up by grade, and most of the people I see in my Park Connections I don’t have a class with. It gives me an opportunity to talk to students in my grade that I typically don’t see outside of Connections. I don’t believe I’m in the minority either. I’ve been with this group since the beginning of high school, so it’s a space where you can be comfortable in between all the other classes. Connections is a safe haven of sorts for the students before they’re onto their next class.

As a senior, I know Park Connections also help each student in particular to their own grade. When you’re a freshman, your PC advisor will introduce you to high school, help you make your way around the school and break you out of your shell. When you’re a sophomore, Park Connections does more activities and gets your group more familiar with each other, and they do their best to make high school better than last year. When you’re a junior, you’re more familiar with your group of people. They start to nudge towards the idea of what you want to do for a career through Naviance, they make you look more towards the future and help you become more aware. When you’re a senior, Park Connections turns into the message that your future is around the corner. Naviance and assignments push you to consider the idea of what you’re going to do after high school. Park Connections adjusts to you.

Park Connections helps you stay notified, communicate with other students, relax and it adjusts itself to help the students. If none of that is helpful, I don’t know what helpful is. We should keep Park Connections because it dedicates its time to help every student.

Park Connections is failing us. Every Wednesday, students gather into school with shortened class periods. Park Connections. In theory, Connections should be helpful and productive, but it is the exact opposite. After second hour, instead of going to third, students make a trip to their Park Connections teacher, where they will be for the next 50 minutes. In Minnesota, it is mandatory to have one of these classes once a week, where college and career readiness is discussed among other things. We haven’t done anything all year besides go over announcements and assignments that will do nothing to better me as a person or student.

My first reason Park Connections needs to be either revised or abolished is that it takes time out of our classes. People may argue that it’s only 10 minutes out of each class, but that time is important and can completely change what is being done during the day. I know for me and other students, waking up on a Wednesday feels like nothing is going to get done. The day feels wasted, and instead of having those precious 10 minutes in every class we have a 50-minute social hour during Connections. The day takes us students out of a routine that we have every single other day. The 10 minutes that is taken away from each class is the difference between getting an assignment done or having to work on it that night or the next day. These days are just not productive in my opinion.

My next reason for Connections to change is that Connections classes are not being consistently done between all teachers. The important mandatory assignments are obviously being done, but from what I’ve seen between different connection classes, not all the same material is being covered. Some go over the slide show, some do only announcements, some do all the activities and some do nothing at all and treat it as a study hall. I don’t see a point of having this class where there is no expectation of consistently doing it between all classrooms. The teachers that aren’t doing it must not believe there is any benefit to them either. 

Lastly, the material seems like it is made with little effort. It’s not productive or beneficial. I’m a junior so this is my third year in connections, and I couldn’t tell you one thing I have gotten out of the class. First, the slideshows treat us like elementary students. We have “time to circle up and talk about our feelings.” The people that create this class are trying to make it feel like its own unique community inside every classroom. To do that we have those talks, but no one wants to share in front of people they see once a week. There is just no community. I’ve gotten one assignment to do all year in Connections. It was a grade checkup where we filled out a slideshow with our grades and what we have done well and what we need to do better. It was the most lack of effort assignment I have ever done in school. How does that better us as students? I can guarantee you the students that are struggling and maybe do need to do that assignment are for sure not doing it. The class just feels it is designed with a lack of effort, and is a waste of time to us students.

Us students deserve better. If time is going to be taken out of our day, it should be for something productive. Scrap those waste of time little activities that do no one good and give us something that will help us in our future. Talk to students for feedback. Have speakers come in and talk to students about college, life or more. Make this a class that students want to be in. Make it enjoyable. Talk about ACT prep, college essay prep or different paths other than college. Give us communication lessons and how to be good advocates for ourselves. Most importantly teach us how to be better people.